Startup is a rollercoaster ride; your team is the seatbelt

Pankaj Mishra


Over 30 million kids use SplashLearn to play games that help them
learn math, practice better.
Arpit Jain, Umang Jain, Joy Deep Nath, and Mayank Jain, the
co-founders of SplashLearn, were batchmates at IIT Kharagpur.


The biggest tipping point for SplashLearn was when it decided to
shift from $10 as a lifetime fee for using the app, to $10 as a
monthly fee.


"We were nervous," Arpit tells me in this podcast.


Today, with over 100K+ paid members, SplashLearn has navigated
that transition well.


As Umang adds, listening to the users relentlessly and shaping
the product with them has been the key. "You co-own the
product with your users."


SplashLearn's journey of building a product, acquiring the
product-market fit, and transitioning to the SaaS model, offers
deep insights about what works and what doesn't. Their early bet
on iPad in 2010 as the learning device to be used by the schools,
didn't work out well. But they transitioned away quickly and
learned from things that didn't work out. 


"Startup is a rollercoaster ride, your team is the seatbelt,"
says Arpit. 


Listen to this podcast to learn about the edtech industry,
product building blocks, and managing co-founder
relationships.